


Companions React to f!Sole Survivor Sleeping Like a Sprawled Starfish

by tea_petty



Series: Collection of Companions' Reactions [25]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Accidental Cuddling, F/M, Hugs, Sleep
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 10:42:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19766533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tea_petty/pseuds/tea_petty
Summary: The Companions learn to leave Sole well enough alone while she sleeps...or do they?





	1. Trial Through Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to my Tumblr; tea-petty

Cait was not an easy sleeper and she never had been. Some nights, it was so elusive, she never even caught a glimpse – those were the nights where she lay in her sleeping roll, eyes open and staring numbly outwards into planes she had no business delving in, lest, she find the sleep that so desperately evaded her. Other nights, it was a cruel, teasing mistress, curling up to her and dragging her into its blissful depths until she awoke in the middle of the night, her breath seized by a nightmare, her limbs contorted in a clumsy escape attempt. Cait had grown use to such games; the traumas she’d underwent providing ample fodder for the nightmares she’d encountered. She really had assumed it couldn’t get any worse.

Then she’d spent her first night with Sole.

It had begun as perhaps the best sleep of her life; one of few that didn’t have her worried someone or something might find her before she got the chance to wake up, one that found her so quickly, and took her so deep that even as she submerged herself in the fog of slumber, a part of her knew it was too good to be true. Sole’s choking grip constricting her had started as the loose, tender embrace one often shares with their lover, but is what crescendoed in typical nightmare fashion into sinking sand, a nest of snakes, and other such things one could picture choking the life out of them in a panic.

Emphasis on panic.

While still not completely shaken of the dream that clung to her, like the sweat that beaded to her clammy skin, Cait thrashed, fighting against the restrained hold as best she knew how – with force. Her limbs flailed like a ragdoll’s, with a thousand times the gravity, and none of the same control. Meanwhile, Sole snored on, and never felt a thing.

Cait peeked an eye open, her frantic motions slowing as awareness leached into her. Sole’s impassive face was visible through the tangle of their limbs, and Cait became gentle. Her panic melted away to fatigued irritation. Calloused fingers groped blindly along the slopes of muscle and flesh before finding something that wasn’t hers, that was long enough to be an arm, or wrist perhaps. With the grace of a crowbar, she made an attempt to separate Sole from her; but it was as if they were fused together.

After a few moments of prying, when Cait was sure the both of them would be peppered in dull bruises after the night’s struggle, she managed to unstick Sole’s right arm from her. She let out a breathy laugh of exaltation – her fighting instincts still had yet to let her down. Then Sole stirred softly in her sleep, allowing her other arm to not-so-softly wrap around Cait in the same octopus-like manner. Her laugh died on her tongue, and there was a sharp intake of breath – both furious, and tired, as the struggle ensued again.

Cait was a little quicker in prying the next limb off – her last battle had left her more fatigued, but miles smarter. Flattening the palm of her hand like a spatula, she peeled away Sole’s limb with expertise, welcoming the cool rush of air as it washed over her newly bared skin. No sooner had she felt this freedom again though, it was snatched away, as Sole’s leg curled around Cait’s hip, dragging her flush to the snoozing woman. Cait cursed softly under her breath, now more or less, awake. She used similar tactics to remove Sole’s leg from her, although it proved considerably more difficult given how much stronger her legs were. It proved to be futile anyways, as the battle wore on into the quiet, Commonwealth night. For every limb Cait succeeded in shirking, another one came to wrap tightly around her, as if Sole were a magnet, and Cait was metal. It was sleep’s version of the hydra; or perhaps the Kraken taking down a ship – a monster of mythical proportions encroaching on Cait’s sleep.

When the clock at their nightstand teased about three in the morning, Cait’s muscles succumbed to their fatigue, and stilled. Like a puzzle piece clicking into place, all four of Sole’s limbs came to wrap around Cait.

That’s how she stayed – with Sole coiled around her, her eyes open and staring at the colors she could now taste and feel in her sleep-deprived state. If she could’ve moved her legs, she would’ve kicked the swathing of sheets off – Sole’s body heat was plenty enough to keep her warm on this vaguely chilly, summer night. For hours, this is how she stayed, watching the sun crawl upwards, past the horizon at a snail’s pace.

And when Sole finally did stretch out, releasing Cait from her warm, cuddled prison, she rubbed sleepily at her eyes, yawning contentedly before peering up at the woman innocently through thick lashes.

“Good morning love, how did you sleep?”

Cait scowled, her blood-shot eyes glowing warmly as rays of sunlight filtered in through the window.

“How did _I_ sleep?”

Her accent was heavy, and voice cracked.

Sole blinked curiously at the surly woman; now her hell was to begin.


	2. The Stars Watch Us Sleep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to my Tumblr; tea-petty

It was somewhere in between three and four in the morning, or so Deacon guessed, based on the position of the gorged moon as it waxed across the sky. Eyes dry and faintly burning, he stared deafly out of the window, cracked open enough to let in a mild, midsummer night’s breeze. It ghosted over him, phantom lips over his clammy skin, until the draft disappeared under Sole’s scalding grip across his torso. Her arms wrapped tightly around him, binding his ribcage like rope and tempering the steady rise and fall of his breathing to half his stomach’s usual apex. Her face was opposite in its gentleness, a placid oval bathed in moonlight. As she slept, she’d occasionally stir in her sleep and nuzzle closer into him, burrowing her way into his heart, even as she slept.

Between the fluttering of the homemade drapes Sole had fashioned (some dainty, white fabric simply _too_ dainty to be much use in the Commonwealth) Deacon could make out the cold diamonds as they winked at him from the velvet navy of the dark wasteland sky. They seemed to splay in shapes he found vaguely familiar; Pictor in its simplistic configuration, Columba with star spangled wings spread, mid-flight.

His imagination stitched these pinpricks of light together, the basic knowledge of constellations he’d picked up from books serving as his thread against the inky fabric of night. In his numb, sleep-lulled concentration, he barely noticed the way his fingers traced the constellations onto his lover’s skin. Had he realized his fingers moved despite the fatigue that sunk him like concrete, he would’ve stopped. It’s why he’d been willing to damn himself to his soft, sleepy prison after all; he dared not wake her, especially after the day they’d had. His ministrations did anything but though, and he felt her swell with carefully drawn in breath, pushing into his touch as the phantom of Ursa Major trailed pleasant heat against Sole’s skin.

From where Deacon was laying exactly, he had a pristine view of Serpens as it squirmed in a freezeframe amongst the speckled gleans of light. It would’ve been ominous had he been the superstitious sort, wouldn’t it? 

A serpent in the garden of Eden, had lured Eve to sin with the promises of knowledge bearing fruit; a symbol of distrust. It was the serpentine figure of the Ouroboros that chased its own tail and sealed fate again in again in a hapless, inevitable cycle. Deacon knew it was supposed to symbolize the infinity of life ending and life beginning, but all it did in his current groggy state was remind him of his own circles. He felt the madmen cracking his skull against the wall in hopes that it’ll change the course of futility.

His stomach pitted as Sole’s grip constricted around him. His ribcages pushed back against her grip, and Deacon was relieved when it was not strong enough to weaken it – that _he_ was not strong enough to break away. Perhaps he was the mad man, and this game of chase between he and Sole, all loaded exchanges and stolen looks, was the real vicious cycle. Every careless touch, and proffered word was a bone she threw to him, and each bone she threw to him rendered him a mutt that foamed at the mouth and bounded after it. The more he kept after her, the more bones she seemed to throw, and here he was, doggedly keeping at her. She had been married though; she had a _son_. 

He had been married. He’d been scum.

His fingers ceased their inkless scrawl, worrying at the flesh his grip curved around in a steady rhythm; a heartbeat skipping into four fragmented sub-beats. 

He didn’t deserve to be anything to her, and yet, he couldn’t fully deny the fact that there was _something_ here. One didn’t routinely save another’s life without that becoming something. If it had been one-sided, he could’ve at worst, chocked it up to her being another witless vaultie, who dropped from the sky not knowing a mini nuke from their ass. At best, he could’ve been her protector.

What was the word for when it went both ways though?

Partners? 

Did that still stand when one took into account their shared living accommodations and the occasional stolen kiss in the heat of a drunken stupor? The kind that dissipated in the rising glory of a morning sun, traceless save for the pink that gathered in their cheeks as they exchanged penny words over a makeshift breakfast.

Lov-?

The word caught in his throat, even as he thought it.

No, they weren’t that surely. They hadn’t said the word for starters – nothing of the sort. They hadn’t _sealed the deal_ either; a very necessary part of the definition, he reckoned. 

Almost automatically, he glanced downwards as Sole snored softly and he remained wrapped tightly in her arms.

He had taken her to bed though. 

His eyes fluttered shut, half to sample the rapture he felt in his current precarious position, and the other half to acknowledge the hard questions that sat outside in the dark, invisible and biding their time until light began to bleed into the sky, and they could pounce on him. 

When his eyes opened again, he fixed his gaze back on the sleeping woman as she held him. Reaching a free hand tentatively up, he wrapped it snuggly around Sole, reciprocating her hug. Shadows and moonlight mottled her, painting her in porcelain in some places, and shrouding her in patches of silhouette, in others. 

She wore the night well, he thought, and could probably wear the stars too. 

_Prostátis,_ he mused, eyes now returning to the sky, as if searching for a dark patch in which her likeness might be embossed in the night sky with the other heroes watching the Commonwealth pass from one night to the next. The protector.

The hand that was not strapped to his body by Sole’s embrace smoothed down her torso, from shoulder to hip, tracing gently again. She sighed lightly – a content noise, and Deacon thought he felt her grip tighten.

The protector, yes, but also, the protected.

It was a vow as much as it was a thought in passing.


	3. Paper Bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gage will never try to help anyone ever again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to my Tumblr; tea-petty

“Boss?” Gage called out, as he entered Sole’s quarters.

The Fizztop Mountain summit was strangely quiet. Late-afternoon sun filtered through the wide expanse of windows. He stepped further into the old restaurant. His footsteps thudded hollowly against the wooden floors, reinforcing how empty the room was with each step. He reached the center of the spacious room and paused, just right of the bar, and scanned the room. He has almost given up his search until a socked-foot caught his eye. It hung over the edge of the bed, poking out behind the small bookcase Sole had erected for some semblance of privacy.

“Boss!” Gage called as he climbed the steps up to the raised bed area.

He mentally slapped himself when he saw Sole’s still form. Of course, she was asleep. He should have guessed as soon as he saw her foot dangling off the bed like a ragdoll. She sprawled out on her back, her limbs spread as wide as the bed would allow. A nest of papers with Sole’s messy scrawl on them lay sandwiched between her and the bed. A couple of inches in radius, scattered around Sole were three books. Gage recognized their non-descript blue covers – she’d used them for bookkeeping; one per gang. He’d never bothered attempting to decipher the symbols inside – he’d never been exceptionally strong in his reading and ‘rithmetic. But he’d wager they were stuffed with the gory details Sole needed for the gangs to prosper, like she’d promised them. The Operators probably touted Sole for the proper schooling she’d received. Not only had Colter failed miserably, but he’d failed to record any moment of his tumultuous leadership. He may as well have not existed at all.

Perhaps that was for the better.

Gage sighed as he watched over her. The bed looked so plush. The documentation, considerably less so. He huffed a breathy laugh, and leaned in, careful not to divot the bed too much as he did so. Collecting the books was easy. All it took was carefully avoiding her as he picked them up and stacked them neatly on a small nightstand. Next, the more difficult task; the papers. Sole stirred softly as if to make her point, and the pile of papers crinkled threateningly under her weight. There was no way Gage could get all of them; but he reckoned he could get enough to improve Sole’s quality of sleep. He leaned further, teetering on two knees. He slunk in daintily – a word that avoided him in nature – and tried to ease the loosest papers from beneath the sleeping Overboss. He held his breath as he felt her soothing body heat radiating towards him – if she woke up now, there would be no explaining this.

She stirred below him again, and Gage mentally kicked himself. What was he thinking? She’d been sleeping perfectly fine, and he’d had to go and get all sappy! Now she was going to wake up to see him hovering a few inches over her and –

‘ _Oh_!’ Gage felt a warm weight constrict around his torso. He wasn’t quite ‘hovering’ over Sole now, so much as laying atop her. Gage set his jaw as heat rushed to his face and mingled with the warmth radiating from Sole’s form. She clutched unconsciously to him; when it had happened in his fantasies, he’d always enjoyed it more, but real life was always so different, wasn’t it? Tension coiled in his biceps and he attempted to lift himself off of Sole, but her weighty resistance kept him planted. He remained rigid; protesting her proximity with every fiber in his being until his arms ached and trembled with fatigue. His breath escaped through his teeth in a low hiss as he struggled to keep his weight off of her. When he couldn’t any longer, his face flared a brilliant vermilion and he succumbed to her sleepy demand. Surprisingly, the rest of his weight gently crushing her into the bed, punctuated by the resigned ‘ _oof_!’ wasn’t enough to snatch Sole from dreamland.

Hours passed before Sole finally woke up. Gage registered awareness leaching back into her body by the pulling sensation of her stretching beneath him. Gage snapped to attention above her, pushing upwards as her arms retracted from around his torso in perfect synchronization. He yanked back the urge to take her in his arms, like one might yank back a particularly enthused dog. Sole blinked innocently up at him with a sleepy grin.

“Well, good morning there, Porter.” She propped herself up on her elbows and watched him expectantly.

Gage tossed his gaze where her control couldn’t reach; out towards the darkening horizon and last bit of dying day.

“S’not morning anymore boss,” he mumbled abashedly.

Sole giggled. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right about that.”

She let herself fall back into the nest of pillows. When Gage finally worked up the courage to look at her again, her gaze held infinite invitations for him to dive below the depths of his shame and join her. With the telling sun gone for the night, who was there to tattle on him if he indulged a fantasy or two? With bated breath, he settled in beside her, the moon standing watch as he let himself cling back to Sole.


	4. A Last Resort, a first choice.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preston Garvey is forced to snuggle up to his favorite Minutemen General for survival, he swears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to my Tumblr; tea-petty

It had already been dark for hours as Sole sat huddled up in the tiny shack, the loyal Preston Garvey to her left, and about three other tired, bedraggled Minutemen to her right. A frigid rain had started tentatively outside, and the wood of their meager accommodations quickly grew damp from the stray drops that trickled in. The small squad huddled closer together in vain, shivering, the damp fabric of their clothing pressing cold further into their unwitting neighbors, rather than preserving some semblance of warmth.

“I know it’s cold,” Sole began, her voice brittle, like shattered glass, “and I know we’re all miserable, but this is the best we can do right now. It’s too dark to search out better shelter for the night, and I think I can speak for all of us when I say, we wouldn’t want to stumble across any ‘muties or raiders in our current state.”

“Sure, General.”

“Aye.”

“Yeah ‘Cap.”

The ripples of agreement rang out heartily, despite how everyone seemed to be retreating back into one another. Sole’s heart swelled; these were her troops, loyal from the tumultuous beginning, to the bitter end, and through every tedious middle. Sole’s mouth quirked into a tired half-smile as she basked a bit in her pride – they had the time after all. Then a violent shiver ran through her, and she clamped her jaw shut firmly – some vague archive in her memory dragged out a bit of parlor trivia; _Folks used to stick wooden bars in their mouths when their teeth chattered so as not to break any._ Sole began to wonder just how cold it had to be for that to happen; for the force of her body’s attempts at warmth to demand a price in return for its hard work. She didn’t dare finish the thought. 

As discreetly as he could, Preston pressed himself to Sole, hoping even an ounce of his missing body heat had transferred through their soaked clothes, to her. The shack remained solemnly quiet as the hours trudged on, the only sound being the faint chattering of their teeth. They found a troubled, flighty sleep – perhaps the only thing more anxious to leave the shack than the cold, wet Minutemen themselves. Exhaustion is what kept Sole decidedly unconscious in the end. The rise and fall of her chest came in shallow, shuddered breaths. Unable to find sleep for himself, Preston watched her sympathetically, and resisted the urge to put his arms around her. That was how he passed about an hour, until Sole saved him the trouble of resisting anymore.

She had stirred softly in her sleep; more so than she already had been anyways. Then as if magnetic, she had angled herself towards him, her arms sliding over his torso to wrap tightly around it with a seamless fluidity that made Preston’s chest ache. He held his breath, afraid that in her firm grasp, she might be able to discern how violently his heart drummed. Sole’s chattering subsided and she pulled herself closer to Preston. 

He didn’t dare hug her back; not here, where it wouldn’t be Preston embracing Sole, but first Lt. Garvey fraternizing with the General. Not now, when Sole was small with how her wet clothes clung to her, and vulnerable with how the chill nipped at her exposed flesh. Still though, he wasn’t about to shove her away – there wasn’t the space to do so for starters, and second, even if there had been, Preston just wasn’t a big enough man to do that. He settled for begrudgingly relaxing in her arms, and if perchance, she nuzzled into the crook of his neck in search of a safe harbor, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if his head fell to the side in a way that allowed him to rest his cheek atop her head.

Unruly as it became by the taunting rain, it was still a welcome softness against Preston’s face, and still smelled so distinctively like Sole. Preston’s heart throbbed.

He found himself much closer to finding sleep now, and the next hour raced by as a result. Between the flurry of butterflies that beat their wings against him from the inside, and the comfort of Sole on the outside, Preston could now see sleep on the horizon. Chase it even, although it still managed to slip readily through his fingers. That was fine – he and sleep had had a rather turbulent relationship since the Quincy massacre. Tonight wasn’t so different.

In his fatigue, Preston had no idea of how vigilant his body had remained until he felt a whisper of movement from Sole’s lips by the column of his throat, and heard her voice call out softly. His eyes snapped open, and he stiffened again.

“Mm,” she sighed, rousing gently around him, “Pre..s’n..”

Then her arm dragged a trail of heat across his chest before smoothing over to encircle it again. It could’ve been the way his lungs lagged on the last breath he’d been able to drag in, but Preston could’ve sworn she was holding him tighter now. Wide awake now, Preston stared abysmally into the darkness, as Sole clutched herself to him, her garbled, dream-speak echoing in Preston’s mind. He wondered at where it had come from, until the sun crept up over the horizon, and warded the bone-chilled night away. 

Preston felt savagely empty when Sole awoke, retracting her arms from around him to stretch her stiff muscles. The brightness on her cheeks told him that their proximity hadn’t gone unnoticed by her either. She refused to meet his eyes as one-by-one the sore, tired Minutemen trailed out of the tiny wooden shack, and continued their journey back to the Castle. Meanwhile, Preston couldn’t seem to shake the tightness in his chest; as if her arms had never actually released him.

“Hey General, a word?”

Sole stiffened as Preston jogged to catch up with her, stopping only when he was by her side. Her gaze remained fixed on the toes of her boots. She idly kicked up dust.

“What’s eating at you Garvey?”

Preston swallowed the lump in his throat, before he opened his mouth to speak. 

This could change everything; things were finally steady with the Minutemen, with him, and now he was going to gamble on all of that, just because of something Sole had done while asleep? But there was no ‘just’ about it, was there? Preston would’ve traded a thousand nights in his warm, and comfortable quarters if it meant having Sole cling to him like that again, needing him so deeply that her subconscious called to him, and it reached the land of the living. The elephant in the room had followed them out, trailing behind the Minutemen; it was slowing them down, and both Preston and Sole knew they’d have to deal with it. Realistically, sooner was better than later.

“Preston?” Sole pressed.

Time to cut the elephant loose.


End file.
